Wednesday, 23 April 2014

History from British Pathé movies a treasure trove!

As an avid movie lover and ex-movie critique, I was jumping into the air when I saw the British Pathé journals are opened (while I was on holiday, how dare they!), and are now freely available on their YouTube channel. There is an easy option to subscribe to specific British Pathé channels as well (sportinghistory, vintageFashion). Hopefully innovation will get its own channel soon as well, but fortunately it already has its own collection of movies organized under fantastic innovations.

The movie archive is a treasure trove for any teacher/trainer/history lover. First thing I did was get hold of the copyright on these movies. Because I wondered whether all these movies could be seen as Open Resources, potentially Open Educational Resources (OER). And whether any teacher could use the movies to rehash and make it a rich fit for their own training or teaching purposes. On their Pathé website the copyright is fully reserved, and while looking for YouTube licenses, I do have the impression the standard license is the one used. So it might not be that easy to use footage, or mix it into content that fits your learning goals. I do wonder how much footage can be used for educational purposes (should mail and ask).

Although this is clearly a great set that gives all of us a look into world history, it does come with its own zeitgeist, and its own gatekeepers eye. But then history is always an account of those who have the technology, the knowledge and the vision. The fact that the archive is set free, is like wandering into a movie library ... marvelous, I found 'unused, unissued material' as an anchor point to find fabulous raw movie stuff.
For one: suffragette material: women workers (factory girls) roaming the streets of Camden while being on strike, followed by a 66.000 rich female pageant through London, and of course Emily Davison who jumped onto a horse track and got killed in an attempt to pull down the Kings Horse in 1913, and more (e.g. Taxation without Representation is Tyranny".